The acquittal came almost as quickly as the charge. Susanne Means would have her life back — what was left of it.

The former teacher poured the past three years into fighting allegations that she used a cooking pan to burn a special-needs boy. A judge dismissed the case last month. In the process, she said, she sacrificed her career, her pride, her identity.

The stain of accusation lingers long after the case ends, especially in the public and emotionally wrought world of teacher-student crimes.

“I’ve lost everything,” Means said, determined to restrain tears as she stared at the whitewashed walls of her Allen church. “I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost the confidence in my ability to do my job. I’ve lost financial security. I felt like I lost my name. That’s everything.”

Initial thoughts

When Allen police escorted the longtime special-education teacher out of Lowery Freshman Center in March 2008, she left the classroom’s kitchen stocked and the walls decorated. She thought she’d return the next day. She never did.

Instead, Means found herself reassigned to the administration building and reassuring colleagues she never touched the 14-year-old boy.

The boy said she did. She failed a polygraph test. She quit.

She was indicted almost a year later.

“There is shame involved in being accused of something you didn’t do,” the suburban mother said. She stopped wearing her nametag to church. She dropped to 90 pounds. She looked up prisons on the Web and became obsessed with crime shows. She no longer assumed the defendant was guilty.

“I don’t believe in face value anymore,” she said.

Blemished record

Means, 48, struggled to find work with an “injury to a child” charge on her record. Her retirement savings, along with her husband’s, went to legal fees. The sensitivity of the case kept it inching forward. She passed a second polygraph test. It didn’t help. She considered suicide.

“One Christmas we didn’t have Christmas,” she said. “Mom was depressed.” She wonders what that did to her two teenage children. She wonders if she will ever step back into a classroom.

There are those who believe she never should.

“You kick a dog, and you go to jail,” said Roger Davis, who found the circular crimson burns on his son’s behind. “You hurt a special-needs kid, and they slap your hand.”

He said his son still goes comatose when they drive by the school.

“I trusted the system. Do I feel wronged? Personally, yeah.”

Curtis Howard, chief of the Collin County district attorney’s crimes against children unit, said Means gained her innocence on a technicality: The judge determined the boy too mentally incompetent to testify.

“Because we lost our main witness, we weren’t able to prove the element of the offense,” he said. “We always thought he would testify.”

Davis is considering challenging the judge’s determination or filing a case in civil court.

Means retains her teaching credentials and has started the process to expunge her record. The legal traces will disappear.

‘Defense education’

A handful of Christopher Tritico’s clients returned to the classroom after acquittals. But the accusations left them cautious and eroded their trust.

“It affects how you think, it affects how you handle your business for the rest of your life,” said the Houston attorney, who has made a career out of handling teacher claims. “You won’t see a teacher-student conference without someone being there. The teacher won’t let the door close. The first-grade teacher won’t give hugs. It materially affects the way you react to your job. You’re now practicing defense education.”

Much of the time, they don’t have the choice to return.

“As a practical matter, most teachers have to do something else,” said Julie Leahy, a lawyer with the Texas Classroom Teachers Association. “The public holds teachers to a higher standard than an average member because they have such direct access to children. That makes [the public] more inclined to rush to judgment. You’re accused; you must have done it.”

That pre-trial verdict leaves teachers “almost at square one,” she said. It means abandoning years of study and, for many, a driving passion. “It’s in their nature to love kids. They’re nurturers. That’s a hard thing to destroy.”

Returning to school

Some, like janitor Luan Le, ignore the sidelong glances and occasional whispers. Either out of financial necessity or personal inclination, they go back.

Le returned to the Richardson school district this week, 13 months after an arrest and charges of raping an 8-year-old boy. Le said he doesn’t know who accused him. Prosecutors dismissed the case last month.

“All my life, I did not do anything wrong,” said Le, 60, about choosing to take another janitorial position in the district. “I am a little bit more timid. I must be more careful now around the kids.”

He tries to avoid students, working late hours and waving shyly when they speak to him.

Le arrived in Garland as a political refugee almost two decades ago. The former South Vietnamese officer had spent six years in a communist prison.

After the charges, the district fired him. The state closed his wife’s home-run day care center. His son delayed college. The family survived on Le’s occasional odd jobs.

Honor means much to him, as does a clean record. He continues to wait for the court to approve it.

Le said his life still feels “unstable.”

Means works in the Collin County tax assessor’s office for half her previous salary. Even now, she says, she lives in limbo.

“I don’t know where to go from here.”

Means sees herself someday championing teachers’ rights. But she no longer envisions doing it from the inside of a classroom.

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